Mystics & Statistics

A blog on quantitative historical analysis hosted by The Dupuy Institute

Do Senior Decisionmakers Understand the Models and Analyses That Guide Their Choices?

Group of English gentlemen and soldiers of the 25th London Cyclist Regiment playing the newest form of wargame strategy simulation called “Bellum” at the regimental HQ. (Google LIFE Magazine archive.)
Group of English gentlemen and soldiers of the 25th London Cyclist Regiment playing the newest form of wargame strategy simulation called “Bellum” at the regimental HQ. (Google LIFE Magazine archive.)

Over at Tom Ricks’ Best Defense blog, Brigadier General John Scales (U.S. Army, ret.) relates a personal story about the use and misuse of combat modeling. Scales’ tale took place over 20 years ago and he refers to it as “cautionary.”

I am mindful of a time more than twenty years ago when I was very much involved in the analyses leading up to some significant force structure decisions.

A key tool in these analyses was a complex computer model that handled detailed force-on-force scenarios with tens of thousands of troops on either side. The scenarios generally had U.S. Amy forces defending against a much larger modern army. As I analyzed results from various runs that employed different force structures and weapons, I noticed some peculiar results. It seemed that certain sensors dominated the battlefield, while others were useless or nearly so. Among those “useless” sensors were the [Long Range Surveillance (LRS)] teams placed well behind enemy lines. Curious as to why that might be so, I dug deeper and deeper into the model. After a fair amount of work, the answer became clear. The LRS teams were coded, understandably, as “infantry”. According to model logic, direct fire combat arms units were assumed to open fire on an approaching enemy when within range and visibility. So, in essence, as I dug deeply into the logic it became obvious that the model’s LRS teams were compelled to conduct immediate suicidal attacks. No wonder they failed to be effective!

Conversely, the “Firefinder” radars were very effective in targeting the enemy’s artillery. Even better, they were wizards of survivability, almost never being knocked out. Somewhat skeptical by this point, I dug some more. Lo and behold, the “vulnerable area” for Firefinders was given in the input database as “0”. They could not be killed!

Armed with all this information, I confronted the senior system analysts. My LRS concerns were dismissed. This was a U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command-approved model run by the Field Artillery School, so infantry stuff was important to them only in terms of loss exchange ratios and the like. The Infantry School could look out for its own. Bringing up the invulnerability of the Firefinder elicited a different response, though. No one wanted to directly address this and the analysts found fascinating objects to look at on the other side of the room. Finally, the senior guy looked at me and said, “If we let the Firefinders be killed, the model results are uninteresting.” Translation: None of their force structure, weapons mix, or munition choices had much effect on the overall model results unless the divisional Firefinders survived. We always lost in a big way. [Emphasis added]

Scales relates his story in the context of the recent decision by the U.S. Army to deactivate all nine Army and Army National Guard LRS companies. These companies, composed of 15 six-man teams led by staff sergeants, were used to collect tactical intelligence from forward locations. This mission will henceforth be conducted by technological platforms (i.e. drones). Scales makes it clear that he has no personal stake in the decision and he does not indicate what role combat modeling and analyses based on it may have played in the Army’s decision.

The plural of anecdote is not data, but anyone familiar with Defense Department combat modeling will likely have similar stories of their own to relate. All combat models are based on theories or concepts of combat. Very few of these models make clear what these are, a scientific and technological phenomenon known as “black boxing.” A number of them still use Lanchester equations to adjudicate combat attrition results despite the fact that no one has been able to demonstrate that these equations can replicate historical combat experience. The lack of empirical knowledge backing these combat theories and concepts was identified as the “base of sand” problem and was originally pointed out by Trevor Dupuy, among others, a long time ago. The Military Conflict Institute (TMCI) was created in 1979 to address this issue, but it persists to this day.

Last year, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work called on the Defense Department to revitalize its wargaming capabilities to provide analytical support for development of the Third Offset Strategy. Despite its acknowledged pitfalls, wargaming can undoubtedly provide crucial insights into the validity of concepts behind this new strategy. Whether or not Work is also aware of the base of sand problem and its potential impact on the new wargaming endeavor is not known, but combat modeling continues to be widely used to support crucial national security decisionmaking.

Armata Tank vs M-1 Abrams and TOW: Who Wins?

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Nice four page article from the National Interest: Russia’s Armata Tank vs America’s M-1 Abrams and TOW Missile: Who Wins?

A few points:

  1. The Russia’s Armata family of armored combat vehicles (Tank, IFV and SP Artillery) sort of takes the approach we were using with the Future Combat System (FCS)…(which we did some work on for Boeing, oddly enough using Kursk data).
  2. The Armata has an unmanned turret (it really does help to be able to stick your head out and look around).
  3. They then compare it to the M-1 (still on page 1)
  4. “The tank that sees the enemy first almost always wins the fight”
  5. “Further, there is the question of whether the T-14 can be produced in numbers….given the state of Russia’s economy.”
  6. They then compare it to the U.S. TOW missiles (early on page 2 and covers the rest of the article)….and the Javelin.
  7. Syrian FSA rebels have TOW missiles (but not Javelins).
  8. TOW-2A is wire guided and probably can be defeated by the Armata.
  9. “If only the notorious F-35 could boast a similar record.” (to tie this article back to a previous posting).
  10. TOW-2B can probably defeat an Armata, because of its top attack capability.
  11. I am guessing that so to can the Javelin (they actually don’t address that).
  12. Right now, only 100 Armata’s are slated for production.

 

Lost Decade

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Article in the “Business Insider” on Russia’s emergency fund: One of Russia’s biggest economic problems

Summary: The Russian reserve fund runs out in 2017.

Why this gets my attention: Russia has been maintaining its federal budget by draining their reserve fund. Their presidential election is in March 2018.

A few notes from the article:

  1. In 2014 the fund was 67 billion pounds.
  2. It is now 23 billion pounds ($30.6 billion)
  3. Federal budget was based upon a $50 a barrel price of oil.
  4. Average price in January-August has been only $42.70 a barrel (it is currently around $46).
  5. The budget assumed 1% GDP real growth this year (it has been in decline).
  6. Export duties on oil was 4% of GDP in 2011
    1. Was 2% last year
    2. Now is 1.1% for January-July
  7. Kicker summary: “With real GDP growth averaging only 0.3% since 2008….the Russian economy has already experienced a lost decade. It needs to implement radical changes if it is not to repeat weak performance in years to come.”

I suspect this “lost decade” is going to be very much a part of Putin’s legacy, where instead of actually growing the economy, the Russian leadership instead comfortably rested on the high oil prices to boost their economy and federal budget and let the rest of the economy languish. People were not that far from the mark when they referred to Russia as being “Nigeria with snow.” To date we have not seen any real efforts to change and adjust the economy, including eliminating the widespread corruption and matching the budget to reflect their revenue. Instead the government has been depleting its reserve fund to cover its budget shortfalls. This cannot last forever. It does remind me of the Soviet days, when they had a huge reserve of gold that had been built up over decades. By the end of the 1980s, they had exhausted this, much to everyone’s surprise.

The Saga of the F-35: Too Big To Fail?

Lockheed Upbeat Despite F-35 Losing Dogfight To Red Baron (Image by DuffelBlog)
Lockheed Upbeat Despite F-35 Losing Dogfight To Red Baron (Image by DuffelBlog)

Dan Grazier and Mandy Smithberger provide a detailed run down of the current status of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) over at the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). The Air Force recently declared its version, the F-35A, combat ready, but Grazer and Smithberger make a detailed case that this pronouncement is “wildly premature.”

The Pentagon’s top testing office warns that the F-35 is in no way ready for combat since it is “not effective and not suitable across the required mission areas and against currently fielded threats.”

As it stands now, the F-35 would need to run away from combat and have other planes come to its rescue, since it “will need support to locate and avoid modern threats, acquire targets, and engage formations of enemy fighter aircraft due to outstanding performance deficiencies and limited weapons carriage available (i.e., two bombs and two air-to-air missiles).”

In several instances, the memo rated the F-35A less capable than the aircraft we already have.

The F-35’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, is delivering progressively upgraded versions of the aircraft in blocks, but the first fully-combat operational block will not be delivered until 2018. There are currently 175 operational F-35s with limited combat capability, with 80 more scheduled for delivery in 2017 and 100 in 2018. However, the Government Accountability Office estimates that it will cost $1.7 billion to retroactively upgrade these 335 initial F-35s to full combat ready status. Operational testing and evaluation of those rebuilt aircraft won’t be completed until 2021 and they will remain non-combat capable until 2023 at the earliest, which means that the original 355 F-35s won’t really be fully operational for at least seven more years, or 22 years after Lockheed was awarded the development and production contract in 2001. And this is only if the JSF Program and Lockheed manage to hit their current targets with a program—estimated at $1.5 trillion over its operational life, the most expensive weapon in U.S. history—characterized by delays and cost overruns.

With over $400 billion in sunk costs already, the F-35 program may have become “too big to fail,” with all the implications that phrase connotes. Countless electrons have been spun assessing and explaining this state of affairs. It is possible that the problems will be corrected and the F-35 will fulfill the promises made on its behalf. The Air Force continues to cast it as the centerpiece of its warfighting capability 20 years from now.

Moreover, the Department of Defense has doubled-down on the technology-driven Revolution in Military Affairs paradigm with its Third Offset Strategy, which is premised on the proposition that advanced weapons and capabilities will afford the U.S. continued military dominance into the 21st century. Time will tell if the long, painful saga of the F-35 will be a cautionary tale or a bellwether.

The London Plague of 1665

Completely irrelevant to modern warfare (we hope), but they have confirmed that the plague that hit London in 1664 was the bubonic plague. I was not aware that there was much question about this. Still interesting stuff based upon DNA:

DNA Confirms Cause of 1665 London’s Great Plague

DNA from Ancient Skeletons Reveals Cause of London’s Great Plague

A few notes:

  1. Plague killed nearly a quarter of the city.
  2. Killed more than 75,000 people in the space of a year.
  3. Caused 8,000 deaths were week at its peak in September 1665.
  4. Black Death killed an estimated 50 million people during the 14th century.
  5. More than 780 cases of the plague were reported in 2013, including 126 deaths (mainly in Africa).
  6. They are still examining to the DNA to see if the disease has changed over time.

Also related (but older articles):

Scientists fine DNA of first-ever bubonic plague, warn of new outbreaks

  1. Justinian’s plague (541-542 AD) was bubonic plague.
  2. Around 2,000 people a year get affected globally.
  3. When rapidly diagnosed and treated, it reduces mortality rate from 60 percent to less than 15 percent.
  4. Strains of the Yersina pestis bacterium in the first plague are different than later plagues.
  5. “These results show that rodent species worldwide represent important reservoirs for the repeated emergence of diverse lineages of Y pestis into human populations”
  6. “New sophisticated strains of the disease…could break out in the future.”

In Ancient DNA, Evidence of Plague Much Earlier than Previously Known

  1. The bacterium was infecting people as long as 5,000 years ago.

 

Retaking Mosul

Nothing new here, just a nice summary article: Retaking Mosul from ISIS

A few notes:

  1. As many as 1 1/2 million residents could be affected by the battle (and thee is a link the to the U.N. report on the subject).
    1. There has been 90,000 displaced people since June
    2. One camp houses more than 36,000 people in a camp with tents for around 10,000.
  2. We will be providing air support
  3. We have 5,000 troops in Iraq
  4. There is a slide show: Slideshow

 

Quoting David Irving

denial_2016_film

There is a new movie being released this month called Denial. It is about the libel lawsuit pursued by controversial historian David Irving against U.S. academic historian Deborah Lipstadt. David Irving was a British historian who specialized in the military history of the Third Reich. His writings downplayed the Holocaust and made the claim that there was no evidence that Hitler knew about it. She took David Irving to task in her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust. David Irving took her to court in the UK, where their libel laws place the burden of proof on her. She had the legal requirement to prove that the Holocaust actually occurred and that Hitler ordered it.

Spoiler alert: He lost.

I did reference David Irving’s work twice in my book Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka. I was well aware of this controversy. On 4 May 1943 there was a meeting called by Adolf Hitler and attended by Colonel General Heinz Guderian, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, Colonel General Hans Jeschonnek and many others. This rather famous meeting, part of the German planning for the Battle of Kursk, has been discussed in most books on Kursk.

The problem is that there are only three accounts of the meeting. There is a detailed account of the meeting in Heinz Guderian’s book, Panzer Leader, which provides a three-page narrative of the meeting. There is only a brief discussion in Manstein’s book, Lost Victories, which mentions the meeting but provides no details. These are the two sources that most people have used. Many historians have just accepted the Guderian account. One Kursk book started with the narrative of this meeting based upon Guderian’s account.

But there is third source. This is an entry in Field Marshal Wolfram Baron von Richthofen’s diary based upon a conversation he had with General Jeschonnek, the Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe. It stated:

“[On 27 April] General Model declared he was not strong enough and would probably get bogged down or take too long. The Fuehrer took the view that the attack must be punched through without fail in shortest time possible. [Early in May] General Guderian offered to furnish enough tank units within six weeks to guarantee this. The Fuehrer thus decided on a postponement of six weeks. To get the blessing of all sides on this decision, he called a conference [on 4 May] with Field Marshals von Kluge and von Manstein. At first they agreed on a postponement; but when they heard that the Fuehrer had already made his mind up to that effect, they spoke out for an immediate opening of the attack—apparently in order to avoid the odium of being blamed for the postponement themselves.”

This account directly contradicts the Guderian account. The problem is that this reference to the diary entry and its translation from German was done by David Irving in his controversial book, Hitler’s War, originally published in 1977. Wolfram von Richthofen was a cousin of the famous World War I ace Manfred von Richthofen, the highest scoring ace in World War I with 80 claimed kills. Wolfram Richthofen served with the German air unit, the Condor Legion, in the Spanish Civil War and planned the bombing of Guernica. He had led a number of German air formations throughout the war and in May 1943 was the commander of the VIII Air Corps which was to participate in the Battle of Kursk. The command of this air corps was to be taken over by General Jeschonnek for the upcoming battle (this never happened). Richthofen’s diary has been quoted from extensively by David Irving. To date, I do not know of anyone else that has translated it.

So, before I used the quote, I wrote to David Irving in 2002. I specifically asked him about the diary and where it was located. It noted this in the footnote to this passage:

“David Irving, page 514 (or pages 583–584 in his 2001 version of the book that is available on the web). According to emails received from David Irving in 2002 and 2008, this passage is a directly translated quote from the diary, and the diary was stored at the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt at Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. A xerox of the page in question is stored in the Irving Collection at the Institut fur Zeitgeschechte in Munich, Germany. We have not checked these files and cannot confirm the translation.”

 So, I could access the files. It was possible to see the diary and check the translation. This was considered. Of course, to do so would have required me to travel to Germany, with a translator, to examine the diary. This would have taken at least a week of my time and cost a few thousand dollars. For fairly obvious reasons, I choose not to do this. Instead, I stated in the footnote that we had not confirmed the translation.

As David Irving headed to trial, I continued to wonder about this passage. There was no reason to assume that it was faked, or deliberately grossly mistranslated. On the other hand, it was something I was not 100% sure of. But, there was also no reason to assume that Guderian’s or Manstein’s account was 100% correct either, and people had freely used them without much question. So, do I build my narrative on those two well-known first-person accounts and ignore the contradictory second-hand account from Richthofen’s dairy just because it came from David Irving? I decided that all accounts needed to be presented and I left it to the reader to decide which they believed.

As I noted in my book (on page 69):

As no stenogram exists of this conference, one is left only with the memoirs of two generals and the diary of a person who did not participate. There also are what appear to be the Inspector General of Armored Troops’ notes for the meeting for 3 May. These notes clearly show the beneficial effects on tank strength of a six-week delay in the offensive. Guderian’s memoirs are quite explicit as to what happened at the conference but appear to be confused as to attendees and dates. Manstein mentions the conference and the issues in a very general sense. The Richthofen entry contradicts the other two memoirs, claiming that Guderian was the source of the six-week delay and that Manstein and Kluge supported the delay. It is impossible to resolve these differences.

The problem is that both Guderian’s and Manstein’s memoirs were written after the war. It is hard to say what passages may have been self-serving or written with an eye towards future historians. The story by Jeschonnek was recorded at the time by Richthofen. Jeschonnek committed suicide in August 1943 and Richthofen died from a brain tumor in July 1945. Which account is more “real?”